The Balk

Eryn drew me this picture. She's says it's a "Balk". I turned it sideways and it looked sort of like a face. She assured me it is not a face, it is a Balk. I said, "Isn't that an eye?" Eryn said, "That's the mouth." I said, "Then what is that?" Eryn said, "That's the butt." Oh. And then for good measure she pointed at the curve in the picture and said, "That's its whirly thing." WTF is a whirly thing, and why is it between your mouth and your butt?

On Friday, we took her to the maxilo-facial-something specialist in Apple Valley to have her backed-up spit gland (mucocele) looked at. You can see exactly how much of a problem it's causing her in the picture below. The specialist said, "It'll have to be surgically removed. She'll need general anesthetic to remove it as she's younger than four." (paraphrasing). General anesthesia? "Well," she told us, "it's not hurting her, and unless it gets bigger, you can just wait it out." So we harrassed my mother, the nurse, who said to make sure adults other than us were watching it as they had a longer period between viewings and would known better whether it was growing, and to use a piece of saranwrap and a permanent marker to get a measure of the thing so we could know for sure if it was growing, then wait it out. No sense putting your kid under general anesthesia for something that will be an office visit later if it's not hurting them. Unnecessary risk. This, of course, is warring with seeing the bump on her lip and thinking, "get it off, get it off, get it off", which is probably just the teenager in me knowing that if I'd had that thing on my lip when I was aware it was on my lip and aware it was gross, I'd have been freaking just a bit.